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A review by jennie_cole
Arrested Adolescence: The Secret Life of Nathan Leopold by Erik Rebain
2.0
Arrested Adolescence is a biography of Nathan Leopold, of Leopold & Loeb. If you do not know who Leopold & Loeb are, they were young adults who in 1924 kidnapped and killed a child, Bobby Franks, in Hyde Park Chicago. It was the crime of the century. This biography is not about that crime but about Leopold's entire life. And I do mean entire life.
If you do know anything about the crime you probably heard that Loeb was the mastermind and that he manipulated Leopold through out their relationship. During the first part of the book where Rebain focuses on Leopold's childhood through the crime, there is a feel that the victim story is true, yet he spends a lot of time during the prison years giving a different impression that the image rehabilitation story of Leopold as a victim might not be true.
The third part of the book focuses on his post prison life in Puerto Rico. If ever you have any sympathy for Leopold or buy into his version of what happened in 1924, this part will shatter that. Leopold is a disgusting human being who prays on young boys and gets away with everything.
This is a long book and is too much. Rebain writes about every event that seems to have occurred in Leopold's life. In this case, I would have been fine with broad ideas of his life and maybe one or two examples but I did not need to know about every "boy" he had in prison and every actual boy he groomed in Puerto Rico. It is not a bad biography is just needed some reducing.
If you do know anything about the crime you probably heard that Loeb was the mastermind and that he manipulated Leopold through out their relationship. During the first part of the book where Rebain focuses on Leopold's childhood through the crime, there is a feel that the victim story is true, yet he spends a lot of time during the prison years giving a different impression that the image rehabilitation story of Leopold as a victim might not be true.
The third part of the book focuses on his post prison life in Puerto Rico. If ever you have any sympathy for Leopold or buy into his version of what happened in 1924, this part will shatter that. Leopold is a disgusting human being who prays on young boys and gets away with everything.
This is a long book and is too much. Rebain writes about every event that seems to have occurred in Leopold's life. In this case, I would have been fine with broad ideas of his life and maybe one or two examples but I did not need to know about every "boy" he had in prison and every actual boy he groomed in Puerto Rico. It is not a bad biography is just needed some reducing.